Fear grows in border village

Gazans’ protests have Israelis increasingly anxious as the key date of May 15 nears.

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KFAR AZA, Israel — It should have been a relaxing time as Shlomit Almog and her husband, Giora, nursed cups of coffee at their favorite cafe, the C Espresso, early on a Friday afternoon. But she can’t distance herself from the news — or the worry. “I can’t disconnect,” she said.

It’s been like this every day since March 30, when, on the Israeli-Gaza Strip border half a mile from their home in Kfar Aza, a prosperous village of about 850 inhabitants, thousands of Palestinians started protesting every Friday.

They begin after Muslims leave mosques following Friday prayers, and most of the demonstrations have turned into bloody clashes with the Israeli military. “I’m glued to TV and radio. I can’t detach,” Almog said, then mentioned to her husband that she had forgotten her purse at home. Her cellphone, however, she didn’t forget, and it pulsed with news alerts.

It was about 1 p.m., half an hour before the rallies would start. The anxiety of Israelis living by the border is escalating as May 15 approaches. That’s when Palestinians observe Nakba, or catastrophe day.

May 15, 1948, was Israel’s full day as a new country — it had declared independence a day earlier — and this year Palestinians are planning to mark the day with huge protests at the Israeli-Gaza Strip border. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militia that rules Gaza, projects that thousands of Gazans will storm the insubstantial fence that marks the border.

Friday’s protest was the first without fatalities since the demonstrations, together dubbed the Great March of Return, started. Forty-eight Gazans have died and thousands have been wounded in the clashes, which quickly turned violent.

Almog frets over her daughter and four grandchildren, who live close to the border in Kfar Aza, or Gaza Village, which was established by refugees from Egypt and Morocco in the early 1950s as a kibbutz, or collective settlement. Some parents in Israeli border communities don’t let their kids out of the house as of noon on Fridays.

Almog said with relief that two of her grandchildren are teens “so they understand” having their movements restricted, but the family has to keep close watch on the youngest two. Adding to fears are so-called Molotov kites, which are set on fire and released from the Gaza side.

Last month, a wheat field near the village was burned to the ground by such a kite, and on Wednesday another incinerated dozens of acres of forest adjacent to Kfar Aza. On Thursday, Muhammad Harazin, a member of the Great March of Return organizing committee, said that “the kites sent by Gazan children is what most terrifies the occupation.

The fires and the ensuing damage is draining Israeli coffers. We’ve terrified the settlers living there.”

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Cite this clipping

"Fear grows in border village," Los Angeles Times, 6 May 2018. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-024. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-024